Last tech on the block

Aah, summer!

Summer!

A fortnight of vacation has passed. There were some pretty intense resting, and I haven't spent more than two nights in a row at a single place for the last two and a half weeks. My mind has been cleared though, and it actually feels a little relaxing to get back to work again. The Scandinavian summer is awesome btw, the sun is constant and everyone is up for good times. I guess we need it to survive the darkness and cold of the Nordic winters.

I've gathered the decklists from the last two tournaments in Norway and Sweden. They are pretty interesting, and may show a small shift in the meta. At Joypad Open, there wasn't a single blue card in the top4. The top4 lists looked like this:

Thomas's BRw Tempo

Mg's Distress

Artelas's Monoblack

Hardy's Trick Deck

Lots of Khalsa Brain mats. Also, 16 Dark Rituals, 13 Underworld Dreams and 11 Hypnotic Specters in the four decks. Now, to be fair, there were only two decks playing blue in that tournament (Power Monolith and Toolbox Murderers), and I definitely wont argue against blue being the most powerful color in the format. Still, the density of Underworld Dreams and the massive majority of black spells in the top4 can't be denied. At the very least, we can say that the Oslo meta is a dark one, and that having a plan against Underworld Dreams or turn one Hynotic is vital. Underworld Dreams was restricted in 1994, and while I think that was an incorrect restriction, it is safe to say it's a very powerful card in the format.

So, WSK then. Also a rad top4. In this tournament there were a couple of pure 5C control decks, alongside a variety of TaxEdge, Deadguy, Zoo, Trick Deck and others. These decks ended up at the top of the heap:

Mg's Project M

Thomas's BRw Tempo

Kenneth's Enchantress

UGR Tempo

Enchantress! Now that's an awesome deck. Worth noting is that I traded the Chaos Orb to Kenneth just a few hours before the tournament started, and he still managed to hit all his flips. Now that's the skills of a pro player of the 90's :) It's also pretty cool that, in terms of card pool, his Enchantress deck pre-dates the first known Enchantress decks in mid-90's tournaments. The Enchantress strategy first saw the light of day a few months after Ice Age came along with the card Forgotten Lore.

As for Project M, my extra Mirror Universe won me two games after sideboard (my sideboarded copy is in worse condition, so it's easy to see when I draw it). It will be interesting to see if someone manages to break the card in a combo deck here. As building a deck takes so much time, combined with the fact that many players prefer to play pet decks, the full implications of B&R updates are usually not visible in the first months after the announcement. I've heard that Lich/Mirror have been tested with some success overseas already though.

I'll update the Decks to beat section with the new decks here by the end of the week. Until then, if you haven't read it already, I recommend that you check out Shaman Ben's last post at Mtg Underground. Also, if you have the opportunity, don't miss out on the second annual Eternal Central old school tournament at Eternal Weekend in Philadelphia. You can find info about it here.